Just In: Harris and Trump duked it out in Michigan on Friday. Here’s what they said….. Read More

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump collided Friday in Michigan, both barnstorming the state as they wage a tight battle for its potentially decisive 15 Electoral College votes.

The two converged on vote-rich Oakland County, northwest of Detroit – where an increasingly educated, diverse population and the suburban revolt against Trump has shifted the political landscape in Democrats’ favor in recent years.

Harris told a crowd in Waterford Township that Trump was “full of big promises, but always fails to deliver” and called him “one of the biggest losers of manufacturing jobs in American history.”

She touted her support for labor unions and said she’d push the federal government and private businesses to hire more workers without college degrees.

It was a blue-collar pitch that Harris also made Friday in Grand Rapids, a Western Michigan city in Kent County, which swung from Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020, and Lansing, where she panned Trump’s record on manufacturing and told union members that the former president is “no friend of labor.”

Before closing his night with a Detroit rally, Trump also stopped in Oakland County for a roundtable in Auburn Hills. He said he’d boost American auto manufacturing by slapping steep tariffs on imported vehicles

Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin make up the “blue wall” – three Great Lakes battlegrounds that tipped the 2016 election to Trump and flipped back to hand Biden the White House four years later.

Although Michigan went for Biden by about 154,000 votes, it also delivered Trump a historic win in 2016, when he defeated Hillary Clinton by fewer than 11,000 votes, breaking a streak of Democratic wins there since 1992.

Already, more than 944,000 early ballots have been cast in Michigan — 13% of the state’s active registered voters, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Both campaigns are targeting specific pockets of prospective voters in Michigan, including union workers, Black voters, suburban moderates and Arab Americans who are unhappy with the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.